retailing

This page explores book retailing, past and present.

It covers -

• introduction
• bibliographies and general studies
• national overviews
• corporate histories
• the Australian scene
• people and potentates

     introduction

Bookselling has followed the same trajectory as retailing of other cultural commodities, marked by the emergence of large retail chains (leveraging economies of scale and inventory management tools, albeit often with indifferent service and unwillingness to cater for what are perceived as niche markets) and the persistence of notions of the book trade as a vocation rather than occupation.

In considering the history of bookselling in the West we can identify several themes.

The first is change and continuity in the physical commodity. For the first two hundred years most books were sold unbound, with an expectation that the purchaser would have them bound (or rebound) in a way that met their circumstances and tastes. Many were sold directly by the printer, with the one establishment combining the function of publisher, printer and retailer. The lack of a hard binding has persisted in France, where many books are still released with a soft binding in a uniform grey or white.

A second theme is the way that bookselling has tracked the 'industrialisation of retailing' that is evident in the rise of electronics, fast food, clothing, furniture and other chains. The evolution of those chains reflects access to capital (and often advantageous terms from wholesalers), advertising beyond the resources of individual establishments and management tools (in particular large-scale inventory management facilities).

'McBookselling' - and predatory practice by some chains - has attracted criticism from independent retailers, publishers, critics (with for example concerns about creation of 'blockbusters') and discerning consumers. restrictions such as UK Net Book Agreement (NBA) have been less effective.

Chains in the US include Waldenbooks and Borders. In Japan they include Kinokuniya, Maruzen, Sanseido and Bunkyodo.

A third theme has been that bookselling - as with books - can embody particular cultural values, resulting on occasion in characterisation of the bookshop as an "occupation for gentlemen" (or merely for single women of gentle birth). Emphasis on bookselling as a vocation rather an a wholly-commercial occupation reflected the aspirations of librarians and the ethos within parts of the publishing industry that resulted in publication on the grounds of merit rather than likely high sales.

A final theme is the persistence of retail distribution beyond the shopfronts of purpose-specific bookshops. The emergence of virtual retailers such as Amazon.com has been characterised as a decisive and unprecedented break in bookselling. It is in fact merely the latest iteration of a mode of distribution that dates from the beginning of printing. Many sales in Georgian England, for example, were by mail and the dominant booksellers in the 19th century US were Sears Roebuck and its peers.

Book retailing is often conceptualised as the interaction of a consumer and a specialist shop. That image is not applicable to much of the market. In the US by the late 1990s only 45% of sales (by unit rather than value) were attributable to businesses whose raison d'etre was bookselling. Within that cohort 17% of sales were by independent bookshops, 25% by chains such as Borders and Angus & Robertson and 3% to secondhand bookshops. 25% of sales were 'direct to the consumer' (including 23% through book clubs) and 29% through a variety of outlets that include supermarkets and department stores).

     bibliographies and general studies

Among bibliographies we recommend Robin Myers' The British Book Trade From Caxton to the Present Day: A Bibliographical Guide (London: Deutsch 1973).

Insights on contemporary retailing are offered by Andre Schiffrin's The Business Of Books: How The International Conglomerates Took Over Publishing & Changed The Way We Read (New York: Verso 2000), Jason Epstein's Book Business: Publishing Past Present & Future (New York: Norton 2000), Tyler Cowan's iconoclastic In Praise of Commercial Culture (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 1998) and Laura Miller's Reluctant Capitalists: Bookselling and the Culture of Consumption (Chicago: Uni of Chicago Press 2006), Harold Vogel's Entertainment Industry Economics (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1998), Thomas Whiteside's The Blockbuster Complex: Conglomerates, Show Business & Book Publishing (Middletown: Wesleyan Uni Press 1981) and Richard Caves' Creative Industries: Contracts Between Art & Commerce (Cambridge: Harvard Uni Press 2000). For a broader view see From Revolution To Revolution: perspectives on publishing & bookselling, 1501-2001 (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2002) by Leona Rostenberg & Madeleine Stern.

     national overviews

An introduction to bookselling in the UK is provided by John Feather's A History of British Publishing (London: Croom Helm 1988), Marjorie Plant's The English Book Trade (London: Allen & Unwin 1974), Joy Thomas' The Truth About Bookselling (London: Pitman 1964) and Cambridge History of the Book in Britain (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 1999-) edited by David McKitterick.

Historical perspectives are available in The Human Face of the Book Trade, Print Culture & Its Creators (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies 1999) edited by Peter Isaac & Barry McKay, their The Moving Market: Continuity & Change in the Book Trade (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2001) and The Reach of Print: Making, Selling & Using Books (Winchester: St Paul's Bibliographies 1998), The Business of Books: Booksellers and the English Book Trade 1450-1850 (New Haven: Yale Uni Press 2007) by James Raven, The Book Trade & Its Customers, 1450-1900 (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1997) edited by Giles Mandelbrote & Arnold Hunt and The Stationers' Company & the Book Trade 1550-1990 (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1997) edited by Robin Myers & Michael Harris.

For the NBA see in particular Books Are Different: An Account of the Defence of the Net Book Agreement before the Restrictive Practices Court in 1962 (London: Macmillan 1966) by R E Barker & G R Davies and Free Trade in Books: A Study of The London Book Trade Since 1800 (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1964) by James Barnes Stuart Bennett's Trade Bookbinding in the British Isles, 1660-1800 (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2004) offers a revisionist view of bindings, a question explored later in this profile.

Other works of value include W G Corp's Fifty Years - A Brief Account of the Associated Booksellers of Great Britain & Ireland, 1895-1945 (Oxford: Blackwell 1945), Ralph Straus' The Unspeakable Curll, Being Some Account of Edmund Curll, Bookseller (London: Chapman & Hall 1928).

For the US see John Tebbel's A History of Book Publishing in the United States, Bookselling in America & the World (New York: Quadrangle 1975) edited by Charles Anderson and broader works such as A History of the Book in America: Vol 1, The Colonial Book in the Atlantic World (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni Press 2000) edited by Hugh Amory. For the early period see Henry Boynton's 1932 Annals of American Bookselling, 1638-1850 (New Castle: Oak Knoll Books 1991).

     corporate profiles

Art book publisher and retailer Zwemmer was lovingly and definitively described in Nigel Vaux Halliday's More Than A Bookshop: Zwemmer's & Art in the 20th Century (London: Philip Wilson 1991). His detailed study draws on previously unexploited archival material in building a portrait of what was a benchmark among bookshops. There is similar value in A L Norrington's Blackwell's 1879-1979, The History Of A Family Firm (Oxford: Blackwell 1997).

WH Smith is examined in Charles Wilson's First With the News: The Story of WH Smith 1792-1972 (Garden City: Doubleday 1985) Books & Co, the landmark New York bookshop established with part of the IBM fortune, is described in Bookstore: The Life & Times of Jeannette Watson and Books & Co (New York: Harcourt Brace 1999) by Lynne Tillman. For the Gotham Book Mart see W G Rogers' Wise Men Fish Here - The Story of Frances Steloff & The Gotham Book Mart (New York: Harcourt Brace 1965).

Terry Maher's Against My Better Judgement: Adventures in the City & the Book Trade (London: Sinclair Stevenson 1994) is an account of the fall of the UK Pentos/Dillons empire. Retail chains B Dalton and Waldenbooks have yet to feature in readily-accessible general studies. Blackwell's site features a corporate history.

Robert Spector's Amazon.com: Get Big Fast (New York: Harper 2000) is the best of the books about the online retailer.

     the Australian scene

We have yet to encounter good studies of Mary Martin's, Margarita Webber's or Hall's, among other Australian bookshops that shaped the nation's cultural life.

John Holroyd's George Robertson of Melbourne 1825-1898 (Melbourne: Robertson & Mullens 1968), Isadore Brodsky's Sydney's Phantom Bookshops (Sydney: University Co-operative Bookshop 1975), Cole Turnley's Cole of the Book Arcade: A Pictorial Biography of E W Cole (Hawthorn: Cole Publications 1974) and Ian McLaren's Henry Tolman Dwight: Bookseller & Publisher (Parkville: Melbourne Uni Library 1989), James Tyrrell's Old Books, Old Friends, Old Sydney (Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1952) and A H Spencer's The Hill Of Content: Books, Art, Music, People (Sydney: Angus & Robertson 1959) cover the Victorian and Edwardian scene.

For Cheshire see the memoir Bookseller, Publisher, Friend (Melbourne: National Press 1984) by F W Cheshire.

     people and potentates

John Carter is profiled in Donald Dickinson's John Carter: The Taste & Technique of a Bookman (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2004)

Sylvia Beach's Shakespeare & Company (Lincoln: Uni of Nebraska Press 1991) is a modest and elegant history, by its owner, of the famous Paris bookshop.

It is complemented by The Very Rich Hours of Adrienne Monnier (London: Millington 1976), Richard McDougall's translation of the memoirs and essays of Beach's rival Adrienne Monnier, and Noel Fitch's Sylvia Beach & the Lost Generation (New York: Norton 1983). Contemporary Harold Monro appears in Joy Grant's Harold Monro & the Poetry Bookshop (London: Routledge 1967).

Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy edited A Bookseller's War: Heywood & Anne Hill (Norwich: Michael Russell 1997).

For Rosenbach and Rota see Edwin Wolf's Rosenbach, A Biography (Cleveland: World 1960) and Anthony Rota's Books in the Blood (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 2002).

Works by peers include Percy Muir's Minding My Own Business: An Autobiography (London: Chatto & Windus 1956) and Barbara Kaye's The company we kept (New Castle: Oak Knoll Press 1995), George Sims' The Rare Book Game (Philadelphia: Holmes 1985) and A Life in Catalogues and other essays (Philadelphia: Holmes 1994), Paul Minet's Late Booking: My First Twenty-Five Years in the Secondhand Book Trade (London: Frantic Press 1989) and Oswald Snelling's Rare Books & Rarer People: Some Personal Reminiscences of 'The Trade' (London: Werner Shaw 1982).

Other memoirs of retailers and consumers include Books: A Memoir (New York: Simon & Schuster 2008) by Larry McMurtry, Old Books, Rare Friends: Two Literary Sleuths and Their Shared Passion (New York: Doubleday 1997) by Madeline Stern & Leona Rostenberg and 84, Charing Cross Road (New York: Grossman 1970) by Helene Hanff.

Among predecessors see Edmund Curll, Bookseller (Oxford: Oxford Uni Press 2007) by Paul Baines & Pat Rogers.





     next page  (libraries)